


thought that i knew what colours were (before i saw you)

by wherelovershavewings



Series: hero/villain [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 17:04:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18743314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wherelovershavewings/pseuds/wherelovershavewings
Summary: in which i use more semicolons and dashes than is strictly necessary





	thought that i knew what colours were (before i saw you)

**Author's Note:**

> title is from 'ice blue' - the mountain goats

There’s a story that he knows, about Death and a maiden.

(That can’t be how it went-)

Death is in the Garden of Life and he takes the flower that is most fair to keep it for himself.

(Has Death ever been selfish before? The Bureaucratic of Eternity, nothing if not efficienct. And yet, right now, he wants.)

 

He sees her before she sees him.

(A need before a want; instinct before choice.)

He sees her and he can’t stop looking. She sees him and the heat of her eyes sears a brand into him that only he seems to feel. Everything else is moving on, no person or thing slowing to see this, _this_ , eternal,- he swears he smells something burning, his hair singed- and when she hands him his order he can’t help the flinch. She gives him a look filled with more worry than a stranger should ever deserve, unrestrained sympathy lashing at the lily-white, this sickly pallid _thing_ -

 

Death is in the place where he does not belong, where he should never be, and he takes that which is not his to take.

 

He hands her some crumpled bills and flees before she can give him his change, leaving her with the dirty copper coins in a lax hand.

(He never wants to take from her, only give, only ever give, pull bits from himself and plant them in her palm so he might feel the heat of her skin.)

The girl stands there, with her cornflower eyes and hair streaming as a veil of light, and she does not see him.

(This one is the heart line, tucked between the middle and the pointer-)

The girl does not see him, but he sees her; he can’t stop looking.

This is how the story goes.

Death stands in the field. There was only dark, all this time. It has always been dark-

(Didn’t you know? Didn’t you know there was more than this, this cradle of dirt you cast yourself? How could you know? How could you-)

-But now there is something else, and the flesh melts from his bones with the heat of it all.

He stands in the fields, more scarecrow than reaper, and he follows her with his gaze while his feet stay rooted in all that he has ever known. A heliotropic figure, loyal as the sundial, selfish in his wants, yet unable to take.

(Has he ever been known to want?)

He tears the heart and sows its seeds, six pips that could never stave the way he hungers, and _gives_.

 


End file.
